Interviewing Q&A and Videos

My friends who are there seem to be struggling quite a bit with the current culture, alongside dwindling mental health.

I love the potential of enacting a change for good.

But would it just fall on deaf ears with no one wanting to step outside the bounds and not change the status quo?

With the current state of the market a lot of people's career has taken 4 steps back working jobs that are worse than what they had been working or it's gonna take much longer to break into whatever you are aiming for.

It can be hard to keep perspective/"trust the process" with how bleak things are especially for someone who has never seen a down market before and has limited on perspective on what a normal market is like

As an intern focusing on full-stack engineering, specifically the design and development of web interfaces for business applications, I'm eager to understand the key accomplishments that would strongly resonate with future recruiters in the full-stack web development space.

Could you advise me on the desirable goals (the [X]s) that I should target so that I can devise effective strategies ([Z]) to attain them, thus enhancing the appeal of my resume? Specifically, I'm interested in outcomes that can be quantified or measured ([Y]), as this format seems prevalent and persuasive in successful resumes.

Hey Taro team,

I spent the first 7 years of my career being a full time iOS engineer at a couple different companies including FAANG (max level reached was E4/L4). And then over the last 3 years I started a startup and have been a full stack engineer (being a founder, you have to wear many different hats and basically build anything and everything the startup required e.g. web app, backend) working with little scale and mostly solo.

After 3 years of running the startup, I'm now looking to get back into big tech as an iOS engineer again. Given it's been 3 years since I've done major iOS work (I have done a tiny bit and I feel like I still know iOS, at least UIKit, SwiftUI is another story), my question is this:

Is it advisable to first build and ship an iOS app to production (might take me a month), then do leetcode/interview preparation, and then reach out to companies to do interviews? Or should I just dive straight into leetcode/interview preparation and then reach out to companies?

Can you walk us through your thought process for Taro members also thinking through a return back to FAANG?

How common is leetcode/hacker rank at FAANGMULA companies and startups for initial tech screen?

How common is it that there are companies that interview similar to Imbue (another YC backed company, whose technical interviewing process I posted below) and SourceGrap h where you actually instead are asked to code on the fly with your actual environment (this to me feels way more comfortable than having folks throw out random questions at me)?

Interview Process length - I've seen rounds go for 8 for some companies (for even Google non-technical a million years ago I've seen it followed a similar format without technical at least like 5 rounds. If someone can post how long their average interview rounds were (how many interviews, how many technical screens, easy to hard, and how long did it take until you got an offer / knew you were rejected - a month, 6 months etc.?). I've head so many stories ranging far and wide over the years and wonder what the average is during this market, which feels longer than a year some people, even those who were laid off at FAANGMULA companies.

Interview #1) Recruiter Reach Out, Resume Submission, and Behavioral

Interview #2) Tech Screen #1

Interview #3) Behavioral with Team Member 2 Years Your Senior / Tech Screen

Interview #4) Behavioral with Team Member that is your director/higher up manager by at least 2 levels or something / Tech Screen #2

Interview #5) Behavioral with Team Member that is your actual position (peer / Tech Screen #3)

Interview #6) Vote by Committee / Group Interview / Panel or something

Any insights into the interview process more in detail will be helpful! Thanks!

This is somewhat of a random question and I assume it can only help but do Github stars mean anything to big tech (1k+ stars) and is "gaming" it a good use of time? (By gaming I mean honest accumulation of stars where the project is popular but not technically challenging)

When it comes to describing your projects, what are the things you should emphasize vs. not? I want to be able to paint myself in the best light when talking about projects at work and during behavioral interviews, particularly those of Big Tech.

Continuing from the post here:

Would the suggestions in that post be different for my scenario? I have added my details below.

I have a total 12 years of work experience. Currently, I am a SDE II at a fintech company. I have worked at this company for 3 years now and had 3 managers in past 3 years. At my current company, I am being asked to constantly move from one project to another every 6 months. For the last 6 - 7 years I have been working on mostly frontend engineering, including hands-on experience in Angular, React, and Backbone JavaScript libraries. I am looking to make a job switch as a Senior Frontend engineer.

I know that to get to the Senior level, I have to show influence at high levels. After reading the answer to some of the questions in the community, I am not able to decide whether I should focus on building web projects or should I start building an Android app. The advantage of choosing a web project is that I already have expertise in modern frontend frameworks. My initial years of experience is in legacy backend systems(mainframes) which I think is not of much use now in Silicon valley companies.

As far as my interest level goes, I am very much inclined toward the web. But I know that app development is definitely something that helps to attract users to your product. I am a bit lost on what I should invest my time on. Considering that I have 12+ years of experience, should I do both? Will doing both Android and web both open a lot more opportunities for me?

Should I focus on building something where I can show the impact with the number of users rather than thinking about the platform (android or web) for which I start building my side projects. Should I even care about doing side projects considering I have 10+ years of work experience?

Should I target full-stack roles instead of front-end roles?

Looking for suggestions. Apologies if this question comes out as too broad and not very clear. I am open for discussion if that can help to narrow down the response.

Current TC: 220 - 240K